> today EV in US or Germany run largely of coal

No? Coal accounts for 11% of US energy production. 7.5% for Germany.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/736640/energy-mix-german...

Unfortunately, you seem to have misread the report you quoted. Germany's not-so-secret is lignite, a dirtier kind of coal supplying 16.8% of its electricity. Lignite together with traditional coal at 7.3% supplied 24.1% of Germany's electricity. [0]

[0] https://strom-report.de/germany-power-generation-2020/

And steadily declining year on year. The next government is likely to feature the green party and possibly even a green party prime minister. IMHO that will set in motion an accelerated shut down of lignite and coal, which only narrowly got averted by the CSU in the current government (the CDU looked more likely to compromise on this). Even so, it will likely take a while.

Otherwise the headline here is that renewables are already the dominant source of energy in the German market. Gas is the only thing growing in market size currently other than renewables and that's mostly just offsetting the decline of coal and nuclear. Overall, renewables grow faster. Otherwise, many EV owners also put solar on their roofs and/or buy power from renewable sources or charge at public chargers hooked up to renewable sources. So, the notion that EVs are powered by coal is very dated at this point.

Lots of reasons to expect accelerated lignite shutdown and solar/wind buildup indeed. And quite impressive to see that 50.5% of Germany's electricity production was wind, sun and water already!

I didn't know the German political system had a prime minister. What's the role of the prime minister, and how does it relate to the chancellor and to the president?

Even if all your electricity comes from burning fossil fuels switching to EVs should be an emissions win.

Your fossil fuel burning electrical generation facility can be equipped with things to capture emissions. So can a fossil fuel burning car, but the car needs to be small, mobile, and light weight and that limits how much you can capture emissions. The electrical generation facility doesn't have those constraints.

In addition to capture, there's also simply efficiency — those same factors cut into how much power is obtained from a particular quantity of fuel and a large professionally-maintained facility which isn't weight/size-constrained should be much better there. If it's going to be burned, we should get maximum value out of it.

The other big win is time: if I buy a conventionally-fueled car now I'm locking in its use of fossil fuels for 15+ years unless there's a major improvement in biofuels whereas if I buy an EV in many states I can at any time switch to 100% renewable electric charging. A non-trivial percentage of EV owners will consider that option over the life of the vehicle and that opens the possibility of policy makers making a substantial change without needing to coordinate with millions of people: bring wind, solr, geothermal, nuclear, etc. capacity online and you have a guaranteed day one reduction in the CO2 generated for transportation.

It also moves the emissions away from where people live for the most part. Not as much a win with CO2, but gas cars spit out a lot of other nasty stuff too.

Definitely - and regenerative braking should cut into the brake residue which contributes to conditions like asthma, although it won't change tire dust much.

The point of the transition to BEV is that electricity production is fungible. It's easier to modify the mixture of generation sources and to scale into renewables a whole lot faster than trying to modify or convert the drivetrain of an ICE vehicle.

Furthermore, even if renewables do not fully power the BEV, it's easier to filter/capture pollutants at a single point source of generation than it is to try to capture these things across millions of vehicles. It's not just CO2 that's harming the environment, it's also nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, formaldehyde....

Coal is 20% not most

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_in_the_United_Sta...

It’s not an either or problem. It’s an also problem. Make power plants cleaner and make cars cleaner. Hit it from Both ends.

> Coal is 20% not most

You’re right ! US has shifted from coal ... to Natural Gas !

I don’t think that this is solving the problem , natural gas comes from fracking ... but it’s definitely a small win knowing how big is America and how much less natural gas produces CO2.

Natural gas is already a big step as it only emits 2/3rds of the CO2 per kWh compared to coal (high hydrogen content). Also, gas power plants can be regulated faster than coal power plants, so they work much better together with wind/solar power and make the transition easier.

There are a ton of viable and productive energy production methods that at least start to address climate change between where we're at now and "nuclear fusion".

Fission may have plenty of issues, but lets not pretend that the entire world is "fusion or bust".

> Fission may have plenty of issues, but lets not pretend that the entire world is "fusion or bust".

Unfortunately , that’s no how it’s work.

Yes fission is great ! France runs on Fission it works greats.

Problem ? In 2015 at the current rate of consumption 130 years of uranium left on earth !

Sadly for us International Nuclear association estimated that if most country shifted to Nuclear that uranium would shift from 130 to just 30 years...

Regardless of how your turn the problem you’ll always end up to the same solution to satisfy the world need for energy :fusion.

Especially if you intend to have EV widely deployed.

> Problem ? In 2015 at the current rate of consumption 130 years of uranium left on earth !

First of all, this is nonsense. The same old peak-blabla nonsense.

Second of all, thorium can be used in current reactors. Third, thorium is practically unlimited.

Existing nuclear 'waste' and nuclear bombs contain huge amounts of potential energy as well.

With newer reactors these limits can be further broken by moving from terrible utilization to much higher utilization. And lets not ignore that modern CO2 turbines can improve efficiency by a further 20% at least.

There is absolutely no limit to fission in any theoretical or practical sense.

Its arguably renewable as volcanoes transport new thorium to the surface.

Uranium is practically unlimited too. We can extract it from seawater for $200/kg.

Germany has more solar than coal

https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...

Don't cherry pick the data on a week when there's loads of the sun in Germany. Take whole "normal" 2019. for example: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...

Coal - almost 30% vs less than 10% of solar

Ah you're right, I didn't catch that the default view is "this week." Thanks.

But does it have more renewables than Fossil fuels?

That's just not true.

Also, we can't have both "electric cars are only for rich coastal elites" and "... but the power they're run on is the dirtiest power available in coal country"